


sixteen candles (never tore us apart).

by talking_tina



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Drabble Collection, M/M, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 08:55:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1220227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talking_tina/pseuds/talking_tina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short drabbles based off of one-word prompts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sixteen candles (never tore us apart).

**Author's Note:**

> **00\. prompt**
> 
>  
> 
> _POV_
> 
> Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction using fictional characters based in the likenesses of real people. Never happened, and I do not own these names.

**01\. crow  
**

_patrick_

  
You are twenty-five and cold, shivering in the frosty air of DC in January. Pete's shivering too, eyes narrowed and dark like a crow's, overlooking the stream they've stopped at. He looks tragic and foreign; all apathetic grimaces and drug addict eyes. You think about saying something, but look away instead.

It becomes a bad habit between you two.

**  
02\. sunrise**

_  
pete_

  
You wake up to find yourself wrapped around Patrick, the blonde sitting with his back against your chest, head resting back against your shoulder and still fast asleep. He’s soft against you, the last remains of baby fat still clinging to his hips, and real on-the-road-bad-diet-no-exercise fat beginning to build on his tummy. You wrap your arms tighter around him.

Sunlight begins to slant in through the windows of the van, a warm orange-gold that reminds you of late autumn afternoons. But it’s when Patrick blinks his eyes open and yawns that your new day truly begins.

**  
03\. fair**

_  
pete_

  
Patrick is angry. Very angry and tiny and red and violent, but he’s a mess, because his high school sweetheart, the one staple in life for five years, left him cut up in pieces, and she wasn’t even sorry about it.

  
His cheeks are flushed and his eyes are red and swollen, and despite the slight weight he’s put on in the last year he looks smaller than you can ever remember him being. Just a baby. “It’s just not _fair_ ,” he whispers, tears clinging to his bottom lip.

 

You wrap your arms around him and go, “I know, Cooke Jar. I know.”

**04\. galaxy**

_patrick_

 

“Look at the stars, Patrick,” Pete is saying from his perch on the ground, lying back against their blanket with his arms folded underneath his head. “Look, they’re shining for you.”

 

You laugh lightly, stumble to your knees next to him. “Did you just quote a Coldplay song?”

 

Pete only looks at you sharply and goes, “For you, Patrick? I’d quote the entire galaxy.”

**05\. enemies**

_pete_

 

You'd say that you have common enemies, but the problem is that Patrick _has_ no enemies; he's said so himself, and you believe it. He's too sweet and earnest and kind-hearted to end on a bad note with someone, still too young and honest to believe that he should have any reason not to.

 

You feel proud of yourself the first time he punches you, bony knuckles cracking painfully against your jaw.

 

You feel proud, because you taught him to trust no one before anyone else had to.

**06\. clasp**

_patrick_

 

The sad thing about Pete is that he’s always clasping; clasping to the remains of his last relationship, clasping to high school memories, clasping onto old enemies and the vengeance tied to them.

 

Patrick forces himself to be indifferent when Pete comes home with a bloody nose one night after a fight at a dingy club, forces himself to violently shrug off the hugs and wondering hands, forces himself to ignore the hurt look on Pete’s face.

 

He wakes up that night to tattooed hands tugging nervously at his T-shirt, frantic words whispered in a hushed voice.

 

**07\. cider**

_patrick_

 

It’s your first New Years’ with the band, and you’re all crashing at Pete’s house in his second bedroom. Pete’s parents made a fuss about Joe and you being too young to drink anything remotely alcoholic so you’re stuck with apple cider, but you’re not complaining because you actually have a secret love for apple cider. It’s like the Pete Wentz of beverages, sticky and sweet and bubbly, and something you run into maybe twice a year.

 

 For some reason, taking a sip of it seconds into 2002 feels strangely like your first communion. Like something holy.

 

You look at the smiles on your friends’ faces, and think, maybe it is.

**08\. headline**

_andy_

 

You’re getting sick of seeing Pete’s name in tabloid headlines, and frankly it’s the most frustrating thing in the world because there’s nothing you can _do_ about it. It would take maybe the entire Teen Titan force to keep Pete inside the house twenty-four-seven anyways, and even then that’s bullshit because you can’t let blog posts on ONTD! dictate your lives.

 

It’s not until one day in the studio when Pete says, _this shit’s gonna make the fucking_ **_headlines_ ** that you maybe see it in a different light.

**09\. café**

_joe_

 

“Maybe,” you pipe up randomly one morning, “I should quit the band and work at a café.”

 

Pete and Patrick both choke on their coffees. Patrick continues to sputter and gasp for breath and Joe watches with an arched eyebrow when Pete screeches (and really, that’s the only way to put it),

 

“ _What?_ ”

 

You shrug. “Cafés, man. They’re like. Zen, or something. I can work with Zen.” You’re kind of rambling, but you never really aren’t, so.

 

Patrick finally manages to hack all of the liquid out of his lungs and goes, “They’re so hipster now, though. Aren’t we supposed to be, like, anti-culture or something?”

 

You shrug again. “What even is culture, anyway?” you ask. “I just like coffee.”

**10\. magenta**

_patrick_

 

“You remind me of magenta.”

 

You look up from where your face is smashed inelegantly into a couch pillow. “I—what?”

 

“Magenta,” Pete repeats from his station on the floor, back against the front of the couch, brown eyes peering at him over the cushions. “You remind me of it. Because it’s like this mix of all these different colors, right? There’s pink and purple and some red in there, too, which is sort of angry in a cute way, like you. And they don’t seem like they’d mix well together, you know, all these different colors with their different personalities, but they do! Magenta’s like this really pretty color. And you’re like this really pretty person, even though you have some ugly parts that don’t go well together, you know?”

 

“I don’t know,” you say, because you don’t think you’re a very pretty person at all. “But I think a lot of those colors might actually be yours.”

 

Pete contemplates that for a second before nodding. “Yeah, probably.”

**11\. burrow**

_patrick_

 

It’s another heating-less night in the van, and you’re burrowing under a few sleeping bags and into someone’s chest. You’re about eighty percent sure it’s Pete, but you’re just sleepy and disoriented enough that you’ve forgotten already and are too lazy to twist your head up to check.

 

You’re vaguely aware of another body snuggling up to your back, and you just shiver and huddle even closer to the warm body in front of you.

 

It’s about the safest place you can think of to be in that moment, and it’s like that that you fall asleep.

**12\. cliffs**

_pete_

 

The higher your status becomes on the mountain of Hollywood fame, the closer and closer you are pushed to the ever-growing cliffs. But every time you feel that you’re going to stumble and fall to your bloody death, there’s three solid hands holding you back.

 

Pushing you higher.

**13\. metro**

_patrick_

 

You’re seventeen, and on the metro back home when a homeless-looking man with a grey beard sitting across from you asks, “You got big dreams, kid?”

 

You blink, taken by surprise. “I—yeah, I guess I do, yeah.”

 

The man’s expression is unchanging. “Don’t ever let them go, alright? Give it eight years and we’ll see what time will do for you. You’ve got something to you. I can feel it.”

 

It’s eight years to the day that Fall Out Boy is nominated for a Grammy.

**14\. creature**

_joe_

 

You’re fourteen when you meet Pete Wentz, and thirteen years later you still think he’s the most exotic creature you’ve ever met.

**15\. leverage**

_patrick_

 

You’re used to being looked down at, literally and figuratively; you’re used to eagle eyes peering down eagle noses at you, used to shifting uncomfortably under gazes and used to being manipulated and handed tools in order to finish someone else’s job.

 

You’re also pretty used their shocked expressions when you punch them in the nose.

**16\.  mess**

_pete_

 

The thing about you, is that you’re always a mess. A mess of drugs, of sweat, of bittersweet break-up songs swimming with ideas of revenge. You’re a mess, and you’re used to people cleaning up after you—holding your hair back when you’re puking your dinner into the toilet, prying the pill bottle from your hands, wiping the blood off your face. You’re used to being taken care of, until you’re sober enough to make another mistake, to make another mess.

 

It isn’t until you come home to Patrick kneeling in front of a mirror and sobbing, arms wrapped around his midsection and fingernails digging into the soft of his flesh, that you realize that other people can become a mess, too. And sometimes, they need to have someone to take care of them, too.


End file.
